Fight Path: Marlon Moraes the next version of UFC's Edson Barboza?

Marlon Moraes has been a skilled fighter from the beginning, as his two Brazilian Muay Thai national championships underline.

But when given the choice, he picked mixed martial arts, and he became a second standout up-and-comer from his small Brazilian town.

Several years ago, when a martial arts show came to Moraes’s home town of Nova Friburgo, he was asked to be part of it.

“The promoter asked me if I would fight MMA or Thai, and I chose MMA,” Moraes wrote to MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) in an e-mail. “I asked for help from my teammates, and that was when I started in MMA.”

Since, he has joined with Edson Barboza to form an impressive pair of fighters from Nova Friburgo, and Moraes is trying to make moves to improve his young MMA career. Moraes, who won for the first time outside of Brazil in his most recent fight in October against Nicolas Joannes to improve to 4-2-1, is in the process of moving to Jupiter, Fla., to join The Armory team.

When he does, Moraes will rejoin Barboza and continue working to move his career forward. The Muay Thai specialist is 2-0-1 since consecutive losses in Shooto shows, and many feel his career is at a new starting point with his move to The Armory.

But first, he had to learn MMA, gain experienced guidance in the sport and meet the right people to make it happen.

Muay Thai first

The 22-year-old Moraes grew up in what he called “a difficult childhood but a lot of respect.” His father was a soccer player, and from there he gained his athletic gifts.

Moraes enjoyed playing soccer himself when he was growing up, and he liked other sports, too.

“But fighting was always in my blood,” Moraes wrote.

At 9, he started training in Muay Thai. He was competing soon after, and a neighbor who was a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt could already see that Moraes would someday be successful with a wide variety of skills. He told Moraes that he should start thinking about MMA.

Moraes started watching MMA fights at that point, and his interest increased. When he was 15, he also started training in jiu jitsu anticipating a move outside of simply Muay Thai.

Luckily for Moraes, he said, he was near a highly respected Muay Thai teacher in Brazil, Anderson Franca. Around better teachers, good facilities and another rising star in Mendes, Moraes continues his affection for MMA.

Franca’s father-in-law, Alex Davis, is a top MMA manager who has helped the careers of Brazilian MMA fighters. In the time since, Moraes has earned a special interest from Davis.

“Marlon is special to me because of the intelligence and speed he shows as he fights,” Davis wrote in an e-mail.

Through the connections between Franca, Davis and The Armory’s Joe Mullings, Moraes had a pipeline to a successful U.S. team and career. He just had to continue his training and early fighting career first.

Up and comer

Moraes had his first fight in April 2007, when he won by a first-round submission. After another win, he was taken in by Shooto, which gave him three fights, including two losses and a win against Andre Rouberte.

By that time, though, he had fought five times in almost two years, but it would be 15 months before he would fight again, when he battled Sandro China to a draw at a Dojo Combat shot in April.

That set Moraes up for his first international fight at a Shoot & Sprawl show in October. The first-round rear naked-choke submission against Joannes was, to him, his most significant fight of his career, and in some ways, it was the beginning of new things.

Moraes continues to live in Nova Friburgo, but he’s in the process of moving to Jupiter to train again with Mendes. Mendes has gained notice by starting his career 7-0, including a vicious third-round TKO win against Mike Lullo at UFC 123.

Davis called Moraes a “smaller version” of Barboza, which has a lot of people thinking big for the Muay Thai specialist who has transitioned to MMA and found himself a team for support, training and, he hopes, more MMA wins.

“I need to thank Joe Mullings for believing in me, and inviting me to train and fight out of The Armory,” Moraes wrote. “I thank my master, Anderson Franca, and Alex Davis, my manager, for all the support and help in building continuing my career.”

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel is the lead features
writer for MMAjunkie.com. His weekly “Fight Path” column focuses on the
circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter
with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.

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